Sponsored: Empowering Women: Collaborating for Success trends
The greatest ally to women in tech is other women in tech. We are a growing force in an industry that for decades perhaps didn’t elect to ignore women, but, like all other maledominated industries at the time, preferred to see our roles in `softer areas of business’.
26 April 2023
It was in 1965 when Frances `Poppy’ Northcutt arrived at NASA’s Houston campus. But instead of joining the space race because of her mathematics degree, her job title was `computress’. You see, Northcutt had one thing working against her: she was a woman. At NASA in the ‘60s, the men were engineers, women `computresses’ or `human computers’, and their status and pay were far less. It took three years, grit, determination, and sheer talent that saw her appointed to the Apollo 8 mission, becoming the first woman to work in Mission Control.
The lesson here is not just how Northcutt smashed the glass ceiling but how, like trailblazers before and after her, she has paved the way for today’s women (like myself) not just to enjoy a seat at the table, but to be positioned firmly at the head of the table.
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